Darlene Franklin - Dressed for Death 01 - Gunfight at Grace Gulch (10 page)

Audie extricated himself from Suzanne’s grasp and took the washcloth. “Here. Let me freshen this for you.” While he went to the restroom, I uncovered the box of tissues I kept behind the register and handed it to Suzanne. She didn’t speak again until Audie returned.

“Who was standing near you when Penn was shot?” Audie asked. “Maybe one of them had a reason to kill him.”

“The mayor was there. Gwen. I remember her, because we bumped into each other and made polite excuses, like two boxers meeting in the center ring. Dina, but you know that.” Suzanne mentioned a few other visitors; she had chatted with them at the bar and remembered their names. If she ever gave up acting, she could have a terrific career as a waitress. She did it well. She mentioned everyone on our list and a few more. “That other newspaper man was there, too. Mitch Gaynor.”

“Do you know if any of them have a reason for hating Penn?” Audie asked. “Did Penn mention anything about any of them when you were together?”

“Not really. All he ever talked about was work. And his family.” Anger cut into the sorrow on Suzanne’s face. “At first I didn’t mind. I figured he needed a shoulder to cry on, about how badly Gwen was treating him. But it got old pretty quick. He carried on and on about how he needed more money for some business deal.”

This was news. How did he plan to raise money? “Did he give you any particulars?”

“No.” Suzanne shook her head. “I got the impression he was working on some kind of deal at the paper.”

“Did he talk about people he worked with?” I admit, I was curious to see if she would mention Dina. “Any stories? Any nasty letters to the editor?” We could look through the
Herald
archives for some of this information, but Penn might have mentioned something off the record to Suzanne.

“Not recently. Work became an excuse not to see me. We’d plan to meet, and he would call and say he had to work late.” Anger twisted her features. “I was a distant third in his life. First there were his kids and then his work. He saw me when he could fit me in. I might have ended things myself unless something changed.” She stared at us, as if aware of how that sounded. “I would have stopped seeing him. I don’t mean that I would
kill
him.”

“Of course not,” Audie murmured.

I could have throttled him for his easy agreement. I wouldn’t let her off so easily.

“You said you thought Gwen suspected something was going on. Do you think she might want to kill him?”

“I don’t know.” Suzanne shrugged helplessly. “Penn said all the fire had gone out of their marriage a long time ago, but you never know.”

“The kids?” Audie asked. “Teens often carry a grudge against their parents.”

I tried to remember if the Hardy children appeared on our sketch. I didn’t think so.

“Hah.” Suzanne snorted. “Daughter dearest couldn’t wait to leave home. At least that’s the impression I had. Penn had a decent relationship with her, I guess, but she was ready to try her wings. He didn’t talk about his son much.” She wiped her face clean of tears and makeup with a tissue, revealing a pale, tired women. “What excited him the most was work. You could count on him getting fired up about some story or other.” Suzanne smiled at the memory. “Like a hound on the scent of a fox, you know? Baying furiously and running as hard as he could to chase the story down. He was a good newspaperman.”

“What was he working on most recently?” I asked.

“Something big.” She brightened. “Penn said it could be the biggest thing of his career.”

“And?” Audie asked.

“And nothing. He didn’t tell me any details.” Suzanne looked at the two of us. “You will help me, won’t you? Help me figure out the real murderer?” A few tears dripped from the ends of her eyelashes. “Penn wasn’t the best of men, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

10

Now that the date is set, I am ready to lay aside the weights which beset me, as God advises us to do in Hebrews. Ethan has offered to purchase my few possessions for a fair price. He will also hold any items that I wish to retain so that Patches may run the race light and swift. All I will carry is my canteen, bedroll, and rifle.

I have seen Mr. Gaynor in town making preparations. I fear he plans to run for the same land. The gulch is divided into more than one plot, but I want the best for us.

~

Monday, September 23

A cup of hot tea, a couple of frosted sugar cookies, and thirty minutes later, I closed the door behind Suzanne with a little more force than necessary. I sagged against the doorframe, surprise and tension draining me of energy.

“What a shocker.” I grimaced. The sky started its daily dance with sunset, pink and lavender drifting with the clouds. “Do you think it’s too late in the day to pay a condolence call?”

“I don’t know.” Audie shrugged. “Maybe Gwen will open up to us more if she’s hungry and not thinking straight.”

I grimaced. “Or she may hurry us away so she can eat her supper.”

I took the cash drawer out of the register and frowned when I discovered a bill laid in the wrong direction, face side up. “What about Suzanne?” I asked, counting the bills as I cashed out the drawer. “She seems like a good suspect to me. We already knew she had the opportunity and now we know she had a whopper of a motive.”

“That doesn’t mean that she did it. We need to talk with everyone on our list. Can I help you close up?”

I showed him where to store the more pricy items, in a locked closet at the back of the storage room. Jewelry went in the wall safe with cash.

“Why couldn’t it be Suzanne?” I swept cookie crumbs from the floor and threw them in the trash can.

“I haven’t ruled Suzanne out. It’s just my impression. She was heartbroken.”

Silly man. Taken in by a sob story. “Heartbroken, maybe, but why? By Penn’s death. . .or because he dumped her?”

“You sound like she’s already been tried and found guilty.” Audie pulled down the blinds against the westward facing windows. “I’m only saying that there are two sides to every story and we need to find out what Gwen has to say before we rush to judgment.”

“You’re right.” I made one more turn around the store. “Okay, I’m ready to go.” I wrapped the remaining cookies in a napkin. “Here’s a peace offering. Who knows, maybe they’ll do more good than another casserole. Dina and I are supposed to take her supper later this week.”

Audie shrugged. “I don’t have much experience with small town funeral etiquette. With funerals of any kind, really. Thank God.”

“Enid is organizing a week of meals from the church.” I locked the front door, and we exited from the back. “We like to take care of each other around here.”

“You’re ready to give Gwen the benefit of the doubt but not Suzanne?” Audie sounded amused.

“At least they were married.” I felt ashamed of myself. When had I become such a Pharisee in my attitudes?

“I think it’s great that the church helps out in times like this. Love in action.”

After Audie said that, I felt better. And guilty. I’d focused on the suspicions surrounding Dina and Cord to the exclusion of the grief Penn’s widow must feel. If she’s innocent, a persistent voice in my mind repeated.

Enid was pulling out of Gwen’s driveway as we drove up. She motioned for us to stop and rolled down her window. “I’m so glad you decided to come by. I just delivered supper to Gwen,” she said. “I hope she will invite you to stay for the meal. She asked me, but I had a previous commitment with Paul. If you do, maybe she’ll eat. She’s not looking well.”

I remembered how I hadn’t wanted to eat for weeks after my mother died.

“Of course we will,” Audie said. “Cici?”

I nodded my agreement. “And we’ll stay to clean up after the meal. Don’t worry.”

On our way to the front door, we passed a windsock decorated with a white bull against a navy blue background, the logo of the Grace Gulch Bulls. Gwen Hardy waited behind the glass, her normally thin face turned into an El Greco painting by grief. She opened the door and waved us in. “Cici. Audie. How good of you to stop by.”

The three of us stood in the front hallway for a minute, waiting for someone to speak.

“We’re so sorry about Penn.” Audie spoke in a low voice, his hands tucked in the back pockets of his jeans as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

It’s up to me.
I sniffed the air. “Something sure smells good. Are we interrupting your supper?”

“Enid brought over a lovely meal. You just missed her. The Word of Truth family has been wonderful. They’ve promised to bring food every day this week.”

“We ran into her on the street. Here’s my contribution.” I thrust the wrapped cookies at her. “I’m supposed to bring a meal later this week, but I brought this tonight.”

“Would you care to join us?” Gwen at last offered the invitation. “We have enough to feed an army.”

“We’d love to.” I thought you’d never ask.

The meal passed mostly in silence. Both Audie and I made appreciative noises over the fare—country cooking at its finest—chicken and dumplings with bacon-flavored green beans and fresh peach cobbler. The boy, Sammy, ate a few bits and then excused himself and disappeared into the study. Soon we heard the rat-a-tat of video game gunfire. Grief takes different forms, I guess. I stopped myself from taking a second helping of cobbler. The more nervous I am, the more I tend to eat. Instead, I busied myself with clearing the table. Audie joined me, multiple dishes stacked in his arms.

“Whoa! Be careful!”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t break a single dish during my starving actor days, when I waited on tables for my day job.” He gracefully stacked them by the sink. “Why don’t you make some fresh coffee? Decaf, if she has any.”

I dutifully searched the cupboards, although the likelihood of finding decaf in any red-blooded Oklahoman’s home was about as likely as a snowstorm in the Sahara. My love of caramel truffle decaf made me the exception to the rule. “How about some herbal tea?” I grabbed a tray from the top shelf while Audie stacked the dishwasher. It felt natural to work as a team. He seemed right at home. I imagined him in my kitchen, swirling a pasta sauce while I tossed a salad. I smiled to myself, pleased at the image. I bet he liked something more adventurous than chicken-fried steak in his diet, although he had taken to Oklahoma cooking with pleasure.

“Are we ready?” He held the mirrored tray I had fixed with mugs of passion plum tea, the sugar cookies I had brought, and iris-flowered napkins.

Gwen had returned to the front room. The straight-backed chair she sat in looked like it was the only thing keeping her upright. However, the meal had brought some color to her face. A hint of life returned, and she smiled at the sight of Audie with the tray.

“Thank you so much. My favorite tea and sugar cookies. I bet you got them from Gaynor Goodies.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “The kids gave us that tray for our last wedding anniversary.” She used one of the napkins to dab at her eyes. “Everywhere I look, something reminds me of Penn.”

“Hold on to those happy thoughts.” The words came from someplace deep inside me, emotions remembered from the days following my mother’s death. “That’s the way he lives on.”

“Happy thoughts.” Gwen laughed a little, in a way that suggested there were a number of unhappy ones, as well. “One of the things Penn really enjoyed was the theater. He was so pleased when Mrs. Mallory hired you, Audie. He fancies—fancied—himself as some kind of amateur actor.” She smiled at some memory.

“I think we’re all actors at heart. Oscar Wilde said, ‘I regard the theater as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.’ We were glad to have Penn in the play. We approached Mitch Gaynor about playing his grandfather’s part, but he refused. Suzanne Jay suggested Penn, and he jumped at the chance. I didn’t know he was a Gaynor until then.”

On his mother’s side. I filled in the blank mentally.

Gwen paused in mid-bite and set her cookie back on the napkin. “Oh, yes,
Miss
Jay. She played the part of a saloon girl so perfectly, almost as if she had rehearsed the role in real life.” She took another small bite and chewed. Listening to her, I knew we had our answer. She had known about Penn’s affair with Suzanne, and it had mattered to her. It still did. A lot.

“I’m glad to hear you shared a lot of happy memories with Penn.” I decided to strike. “You hear about so many unhappy marriages these days.”

Gwen stirred a spoonful of sugar into her mug and took a sip. A myriad of emotions played across her face. I wondered what she would decide to share, if anything.

“Our marriage wasn’t perfect. No marriage is.” She ran her finger around the edge of the tray, tracing the delicate pattern. “But it was built to last. I meant it when I said, ‘till death do us part.’ ” Her face crumpled. “And now death has parted us, long before it was meant to happen. I’ve lost him forever.” A few tears fell, but she regained her composure.

Interesting that she used first person singular to describe her wedding vows. Was the commitment to the marriage one-sided? Of course we knew about Penn’s infidelity, but had he taken steps to get out of his marriage? Did Gwen want Penn so badly that if she couldn’t have him, no one could—even if it meant murder?

Audie caught my eye and made a circle with his index finger. I recognized the gesture from rehearsals. Wrap it up.

“Mrs. Hardy—” he began.

“Gwen, please.”

“Gwen. May I ask you about the play?”

She turned her hands over in a resigned gesture. “Certainly.”

Audie paused, as if considering his words, before continuing. “Penn was so excited about writing the play for the reenactment.” Audie wrapped his long fingers around a slate blue mug. “I think it was the best of both worlds for him. The research intrigued his journalistic instincts, and writing the play allowed him to indulge the artist. He certainly had a way with words.”

Gwen settled back in her chair, a wistful look temporarily transforming her into the young beauty who had captured Penn’s heart. “He used to write poetry for me. Most of it was pretty awful. He thought it was cute that our names rhymed—Gwen and Penn, you know—and he used every possible rhyme he could think of and even made up a few words. I was carried away by the romance of it all.” Her lips relaxed, soft, comfortable. “No one had ever written poetry for me before.”

I tried to imagine a young Penn Hardy so smitten that he wrote sappy love poems. What had happened along the way to make him turn to Suzanne? Had Gwen’s feelings changed as well—from poetic enchantment to darker tales of murder? I looked at our hostess and doubted it. The grief in her face had softened with the happy memories, but her clothes still spoke volumes of grief. Not the unrelieved black of the Victorian era, but a more modern version. Her careless combination of a polka dot blouse with plaid slacks said a lot about overwhelming feelings that allowed her to commit a fashion faux pas.

And how did we get so far from the subject of the play? I wondered what point Audie was trying to uncover. Where did he want to steer the conversation?

“He did some of that with the play. Told some of the story in rhyme. ‘Did Grace try to save a space, seeking to win the race/or did he win fair and square, beating out his foe Gay-nair.’ ” His deadpan mimic made Penn come to life in the room.

“Yes.” Gwen choked on her laughter. “The Ballad of Grace Gulch. He wanted to publish it in the
Herald
. I warned him to be careful of a libel suit. Bob Grace’s ghost would haunt him to the grave even if all he wanted to do was poke fun at the old feud.”

“Do you think he had the facts of the story straight?” Audie leaned forward in his chair. “I was a little surprised when the play repeated the traditional story of the land run. I heard he had found some of Bob Grace’s old letters.”

“Those letters!” Momentary fury twisted Gwen’s face. She pulled a burlap sack with crackling paper sounds from under a side table. “I wish he had never found the stupid things.”

“Where did he run across them?”

“Oh, when he was rummaging through old papers at the office, looking for information about the land run. Why didn’t he leave well enough alone? If he had never decided to tell the true story of Grace Gulch—as he put it—and if he’d never taken part in your play, maybe he’d still be alive.”

She shoved the sack of Audie. “Take them. I don’t ever want to see them again.” Tears gathered in her nutmeg-brown eyes, ready to overflow in a cascade of love lost. “Please leave.” We had to lean forward to catch her words. “I’d like to be alone.”

We said farewell and departed, leaving Gwen alone in the darkened living room, with only the mirrored tray to remind her of happier times.

“I feel awful,” I told Audie. “She seemed in better spirits when we arrived than when we left.”

“Maybe she just needs to cry.” Audie spoke as if he had been comforting grieving widows all his life. “We’re trying to help. If we can bring Penn’s murderer to justice, that should bring her some comfort.”